The sign in reception has changed to "Cabinet Office E-government Unit": the Office of the e-Envoy has been abolished. And as offices change, so does the personnel. Outgoing e-envoy Andrew Pinder has spent four years in the job. Now, he is ready to talk about it.

After 18 years at the Inland Revenue and time in the private sector, Pinder became e-envoy in 2000. Part of his job was to convince civil servants of the importance of the government's target of placing all services online by the end of next year. In 2001, he compared the civil service to a supertanker, taking a long time to turn round. Three years on, has it changed direction? "It's never completed, is it?" he says. "You've got tides pushing against you all the time."

He recalls meeting a group of permanent secretaries in 2002. "The level of scepticism then, and of people showing willingness but not really understanding the topic, was really quite high. Now, it's not. I think the civil service has got it on the use of information technology, and using it for transactional services."

Pinder says around 95% of the 600 services tracked will be fully online by the deadline. A handful will not, either because large-scale implementations such as e-voting require legislative changes, or because they are used by only a few people, such as for burial at sea.

A few years ago, some online services, such as the Inland Revenue's online tax return system, seemed doomed to low usage. So in 2002, increased use of key services was added to the e-envoy's targets.

Pinder now says that his old employer is an e-government success story, with usage doubling each year, to the point where around one in seven tax returns are completed on the internet. But surely it compares badly with countries such as Australia, where a third of individual tax returns are filed online? "The pretty unusual thing - it's not quite unique - about the Inland Revenue is that, on the whole, we do people's tax returns for them through Pay As You Earn. The minority who fill in returns have the most complex finances, and are generally older. Therefore, it's a miracle that any of them are filed electronically."

Pinder was also charged with making the UK the best environment for e-commerce. In April, the Economist Intelligence Unit and IBM placed the UK second in the world for e-readiness. "Five years ago, we were way down in the middle," he says.

Perhaps Pinder's biggest change involved closing the UKOnline portal site, which aimed to help users find the right state sector website, and replacing it with Directgov, which is intended to provide what users want at the one site.

Pinder says Directgov uses the concept of franchised sections. So, for example, the Department of Work and Pensions runs the disabled people section of the site, coordinating with other organisations, such as the Department for Transport on dis abled driving licences. Then the DWP produces its section under strict editorial guidelines. Of 32 franchises planned, three are running in full and seven are working on a small scale. "We're a tenth of the way there," says Pinder. "When you ask, 'Is Directgov doing what I want it to do?' of course it's not. But it will do."

With hindsight, is there anything he would have done differently? "I would have worked earlier on trying to get government departments to work together more. We didn't really get on to that until a year or so into my job. It turned out that the key was getting government departments to look after something across government."

Does he have a favourite gov.uk site? "The one I should be looking at at the moment is Worktrain," jokes Pinder, referring to the jobs and training courses site, adding that the Foreign Office and the Department of Transport are doing well online.

What about blogging? "I have one myself," says Pinder, but it isn't public. He has used the technique for internal communications: "Rather than doing the usual letter from management, I sit down occasionally and tap out a few thoughts. People can have a look and give us feedback on them. It's great as an internal tool."

Pinder is planning some consultancy work and taking on a few company directorships. But what advice will he offer his successor, Ian Watmore, whose job title will be head of e-government? "He'd be well advised not to listen to [my advice]. You've got to make your own mark and do your own thing."

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